across the moor to Ashiesteil, in the clear brown summer twilight, after sunset.  He saw a man a little way ahead of him, but, just before he reached the spot, the man disappeared.  Scott rode about and about, searching the low heather as I had done, but to no purpose.  He rode on, and, glancing back, saw the same man at the same place.  He turned his horse, galloped to the spot, and again—­nothing!  “Then,” says Sir Walter, “neither the mare nor I cared to wait any longer.”  Neither had I cared to wait, and if there is any shame in the confession, on my head be it!

There came a week of blazing summer weather; tramping over moors to lochs like sheets of burnished steel was out of the question, and I worked at my book, which now was all but finished.  At length I wrote THE END, and “o le bon ouff! que je poussais,” as Flaubert says about one of his own laborious conclusions.  The weather broke, we had a deluge, and then came a soft cloudy day, with a warm southern wind suggesting a final march on Loch Nan.  I packed some scones and marmalade into my creel, filled my flask with whiskey, my cigarette-case with cigarettes, and started on the familiar track with the happiest anticipations.  The Lone Fisher was quite out of my mind; the day was exhilarating—­one of those true fishing-days when you feel the presence of the sun without seeing him.  Still, I looked rather cautiously over the edge of the slope above the loch, and, by Jove! there he was, fishing the near side, and wading deep among the reeds!  I did not stalk him this time, but set off running down the hillside behind him, as quickly as my basket, with its load of waders and boots, would permit.  I was within forty yards of him, when he gave a wild stagger, tried to recover himself, failed, and, this time, disappeared in a perfectly legitimate and accountable manner.  The treacherous peaty bottom had given way, and his floating hat, with a splash on the surface, and a few black bubbles, were all that testified to his existence.  There was a broken old paling hard by; I tore off a long plank, waded in as near as I dared, and, by help of the plank, after a good deal of slipping, which involved an exemplary drenching, I succeeded in getting him on to dry land.  He was a distressing spectacle—­his body and face all blackened with the slimy peat-mud; and he fell half-fainting on the grass, convulsed by a terrible cough.  My first care was to give him whiskey, by perhaps a mistaken impulse of humanity; my next, as he lay, exhausted, was to bring water in my hat, and remove the black mud from his face.

Then I saw Percy Allen—­Allen of St. Jude’s!  His face was wasted, his thin long beard (he had not worn a beard of old), clogged as it was with peat-stains, showed flecks of grey.

“Allen—­Percy!” I said; “what wind blew you here?”

But he did not answer; and, as he coughed, it was too plain that the shock of his accident had broken some vessel in the lungs.  I tended him as well as I knew how to do it.  I sat beside him, giving him what comfort I might, and all the time my memory flew back to college days, and to our strange and most unhappy last meeting, and his subsequent inevitable disgrace.  Far away from here—­Loch Nan and the vacant moors—­my memory wandered.